God is doing some amazing things out here in South Sudan. The malaria out here is still bad and the clinic is still very busy some days we are seeing more then 100 patients a day. Right now we have a baby who is 1 month old and came in on Thursday barely breathing and convulsing every couple minutes. My job most was to keep him breathing. We were not confident he would make it i was having to bag him a lot just to get him to breath. I am happy to say I no longer have to sit with him to keep breathing he is breathing on his own now. Yesterday was his first day without convulsions and this morning we were able to take out the NG tube. He is doing much better then when he came in. He is very tired and sleeps all day so we are still keeping him here to observe him. God definitely is healing this boy! We have had many opportunities to pray with him and his family.
God is really teaching me a lot here. I am making many new friends and love learning the culture. I have a little over 3 weeks left and it feels like time has flew by!
We have seen many cases of children in bad situation and through prayers and our limited supplies, ability and facility, God is coming forth as usual and healing these little ones, we are seeing His miracles first hand every day. When the Doctors are out of options, they just wait on God and the Lord Jesus, and in deed he has been so gracious the last 3 weeks, that many children and patients turn a corner and come back to life even when all odds were against them.
There is this child, one year old who was brought convulsing. He was in a very bad state, and the doctors had to be there to help him breathe. Nobody thought the child will make it, they were to go to Wau but the family had no money so they had to stay. Praise be to God the child can now breathe on its own.
Tonj is about 63 Miles away from Wau, which is the biggest city around here. One of the issues the city is effected by is Street Children. Children from3 or 4 other states goes to Wau and lives in the street, involved in all kind of problems that you could imagine, from stealing to getting abused by people, to some time even getting killed in the street. The city is really effected by it. So some people from Wau decided to round up all the street children and sent them to the state where they come from originally and ethnically. So we have received here in Tonj about may be 30 kids, mostly from the area of Tonj and some from other state and counties. the county here also rounded the small number of the street kids in Tonj town and put them with the same group came from Wau totaling the number to 54 kids.
I was looking for one of the kids I know, so I went to see him in the place where I heard they are keeping the kids, to my surprise I see all these kids in the building that are suppose to be the county offices, still under construction, so they have 1 big hall, they have just a 1 big piece of tarp and nothing else to sleep in. There were some police men guarding the kids, and to keep them off problems. The commissioner of the town is working hard to feed them, but we all see its very hard on him with the limited resources he has.
I started going through the kids, looking for this one kid I know, I started to notice many of the street children are with wounds, rashes and scabies around their hands, and different parts of their bodies, most of them wore torn filthy clothes that filled with lies.
Since We have a clinic, I asked our clinic staff if we could help these kids, and that what they have done. Our clinic staff including Dr. Tom went to the place and saw all the kids and started treatments to many health issues these kids have got. the following day they took the kids to the river made them wash their bodies and then applies this lotion to heal the scabies.
Stephanie Staubs ayoung lady missionary with us here for 3 month, gave money and bought all the kids treated Mosquito nets. We had Donated T shirts from American, donated Harvest Crusade t-shirts as well, that we were very thankful to still have some of them, we gave these kids these T-shirts, and it was a huge Joy for us to see the smiles on these little one faces.
Few days ago I had a meeting with the Director for child protection State level , He came all the way from Kuajok to see these kids, I was impressed by the level of care they have shown during the meeting towards these kids, they have shown seriousness about the kids beingreunited with their families and reintegrated them back to the society, a representative of a UNICEF was present as well. Big Job awaits them.
In the meeting they have invited us to help the kids in anyway we can, since they know we are faith based mission organization, they invited us to minister to the kids, sharing the Bible with the children and teach them about God. We happily accepted the invitation, actually we have already felt free to show Jesus film and share the gospel message with them before they gave us the permission to do so. Pastor Kibe and Pastor Santino went one night and showed the Jesus film to the kids, for many of them it was the first time to see a movie about Jesus. Kibe is planning to show more Movies that will teach God’s love and good value to the kids, Walking with Jesus and God story to mention few.
Commissioner Mario Monydiedh handing T-shirts for the street children
These Children are as young as 7 years old to 13 years old, all boys, In fact, the few weeks we have been working with them now, we have seen behaviors makes us so concern about the little one that are among them, and we pray the reunion would happen as fast as possible to save these little one from the older one influence.
Stephanie and Kibe are going to have continuous ministry with these kids, where they will play kids games and sport event once a month.
We are starting a fundraiser from here in conjunction with some people back at home church in California for the purpose of feeding these kids. It will cost about $100 to feed a child for a month,we are hoping to raise funding for 54 children for up to 3 month, hoping by then they have all be reunited with their families and found homes to live. if you want to donate please go to the website. https://www.indeedandtruth.org/donate.php
Please pray for wisdom, as there are reasons for these kids to leave home, some kids are not happy with the thier families and are not willing to go back to their home. some stories are just sad stories led the kids in the street, we are planning to share some of the stories in the coming weeks, so we really urge you to pray for wisdom as we work with these kids and share the gospel message with them day to day.
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:2 NLT
It is always a joy to watch someone’s life be transformed by the Holy Spirit, it is a very special Holy experience that can not be easily explained. Our prayer for the people of Tonj is that they would experience transformation in the same way each of us has experienced it, that would leave no doubt that there is one true and living God who continues to perform miracles every day.
Part of our outreach to the community has involved our medical clinic team reaching out to the patients through home visits. The following testimony was such an encouragement from Sham, one of our nurses on the medical team, I hope it will bless you as it blessed us.
We visited Hyzindia village to the home of Veronica Abeny and Mary Nyaruon. Veronica has three children who are under five years and Mary is an expectant mother with the first baby. With the rainy season starting, we have begun educating pregnant women who visit our clinic on ways of preventing malaria and this has raised a lot of awareness to the community around. Veronica Abeny previously had brought the children to our clinic suffering from malaria and Mary Nyaruon had visited the clinic suffering from malaria. We decided to visit the two ladies after we noted there were high cases of malaria from their village of Hyzindia. We went to visit them and gave them two insecticide treated nets. Many neighbors came and listened to the health talk and also heard the gospel. They were so appreciative to IDAT and the great work God is doing through the ministry and said it was an encouragement to the community.
IDAT Medical Team Distributes NetsMedical Team Praying with the Residents of HyzindiaIDAT Team Fellowship and Share on the Outreach
These photos are of a baby in the Embrace baby warmer. A mother by the name Nyamtoc Mayual from Yapango village has been our ANC client since she became expectant. At eight months pregnant she suffered from malaria which contributed to preterm labor and successfully gave birth to a preterm baby boy weighing 2.1 kgs (4.5 lbs). The baby had problems in breathing {Respiratory Distress Syndrome}. We put the baby on oxygen therapy and in the Embrace for warmth. The baby stayed in the Embrace in our clinic for two days and was discharged stable. The Embrace contributed a lot in the well being of this premature baby. He is now doing well.
We thank God for IDAT Ministries for the work it’s doing to the community of Tonj, South Sudan.
